Turkish rights NGO decries Egypt death sentences

ISTANBUL

The Human Rights and Justice Movement, a Turkish NGO based in Istanbul, issued a statement on Wednesday demanding that Egypt a raft of death sentences handed down against several Egyptian young people.

In early 2014, 24 young Egyptians were arrested after a police officer was killed in the northern city of Mansoura.

Claiming the defendants had been tortured to elicit confessions, the NGO said in its statement that taped confession videos broadcast on Egyptian state television had shown “clear signs of torture on the young men”.

“The defendants had even told their families that they had been subject to torture, including electric shocks, sexual violations, stress positions. and threats against their relatives,” the statement read.

“When the defendants were brought before the prosecution authorities, they withdrew their confessions, saying they had been tortured,” it added.

“But they were forced into ‘admitting’ their guilt at a second hearing after being subject to further torture at the hands of Egypt’s security agencies,” the NGO said.

“The court later slapped six of the defendants with death penalties for allegedly killing the police officer and joining a ‘terrorist organization’ -- sentences later upheld by Egypt’s High Court of Appeals,” the same statement continued.

Noting that torture is considered a crime against humanity and that a fair trial is a basic human right, the NGO urged the Egyptian presidency and judiciary to immediately lift the sentences and launch a retrial.

“If the sentences are not lifted within 10 days, the defendants will be at serious risk of execution,” it asserted. “Those responsible for torture and other criminal acts during the course of this trial should answer to justice.”

The NGO’s statement concluded with the demand that the defendants be given a fair retrial “in accordance with basic human rights and universal standards, thus establishing a precedent for similar cases in the future”.

Egypt has been roiled by violence and turmoil since when Mohamed Morsi -- Egypt’s first freely elected president and a Muslim Brotherhood leader -- was ousted and imprisoned in a bloody military coup.